Another Snip About Blogs (and the books that follow)

"Am I right, ladies?!?!"

You might think I was at a comedy club, but no, I am reading blogs by Christian women, books by the same and not enjoying every minute of it.

I don't expect to find the "perfect" anything, but I gotta say the new swoop of women preaching the gospel of "everything you do is OK" is a little disturbing. There are bunches of blogs and books out there with this philosophy and it makes me cringe a little when the tone is asking me to implicate myself in all of this mess...

My mother, who is chronically passive aggressive, left me a printout of this blog-post (written by a man) letting parents know that if they yell at their kids, want to hide in closets from them and who generally gripe about the roles they've been given that they're not terrible parents. I disagree. I'm not sure what my mother intended me to get out of this, but what I got was a headache.

Of course the ideal or perfect is not out there and I'm not striving for it. I'm striving for what my baby needs me to be, not what my neighbor's baby needs her mamma to be. I do have a simple focus on my family. Maybe that's unusual, but it's where I'm coming from.

I do think that yelling at your kids, having tantrums, constantly complaining about parenting is bad parenting and we should admit it as such. The distinction I draw is that not all hope is lost if these things do happen. I believe in forgiveness and reconciliation between parents and children and it's the parents who need to model this. What I find is that most parents who are angry, dissatisfied parents got into it for the wrong reasons and are festering in their bad choices because they can't keep their minds and hearts on their little nucleus. They're too busy comparing themselves and their unwitting families to others. Festering dissatisfaction leads to many an unhappy family.

So, you yell, you stop, you get your sorry butt together (a six year old is not your equal, so being her bully is not going to work out so well for either of you), ask her forgiveness, talk about what happened then take your sorry butt to God and ask for help to find a better way.

And if you can't find a better way than yelling and avoiding you need to go find a good counselor. Patting ourselves on the back for bad parenting is not the answer. Acknowledgement of where we fall short is great. Admitting our faults is good therapy. However, when it starts to become the normal way we talk about our lives and our little ones we have left the path of reason.

Parenting is hard, or hadn't you heard? But it doesn't make it easier to have a bunch of women, especially Christian parents, saying "hey ladies, just let it go; you're not perfect, so what of it? It's all about how you feel, not how you make your family feel." Let's just admit it, it IS being a terrible parent to yell at your child, but it doesn't stop there. There has to be a reasonable in-between. The standard isn't perfection, but it should be kindness, love, gentleness... and when you mess that up, you get up and get your forgiveness on.

Am I right, ladies? Am I right?